Gaius Julius Caesar Drusus

“ And these pictures of brave days, and many another vision like them, welled up in Drusus's mind, and the remembrance of the marble temples of the Greek cities faded from his memory; for, as he told himself, Rome was built of nobler stuff than marble;—she was built of the deeds of men strong and brave, and masters of every hostile fate. And he rejoiced that he could be a Roman, and share in his country's deathless fame, perhaps could win for her new honour,—could be consul, triumphator, and lead his applauding legions up to the temple of Capitoline Jove—another national glory added to so many. ”

“ Tiberius having left no son, the Senate recognized Gaius Caesar, son of Germanicus and Agrippína, grandson of Julia, and great-grandson of Augustus, as Emperor. He is better known as CALIGULA,—a nickname given him by the soldiers from the buskins he wore. He was twenty-five years of age when he began to reign, of weak constitution, and subject to fits. After squandering his own wealth, he killed rich citizens, and confiscated their property. He seemed to revel in bloodshed, and is said to have expressed a wish that the Roman people had but one neck, that he might slay them all at a blow. ”

“ And into the atrium, sword in hand, burst Caius Curio, and another young, handsome, aquiline-featured man, dressed in a low-girt tunic, with a loose, coarse mantle above it,—a man known to history as Marcus Antonius, or "Marc Antony "; and at their backs were twenty men in full armour.
The courage of the lanista had failed him. Already Drusus's reinforcements in the peristylium had become so numerous and so well armed that the young chieftain was pushing back the gladiators and rapidly assuming the offensive. Gabinius was the first to take flight. ”

“ Then at last the men who had been elected for subsequent service succeeded to the position and administered the business that fell to them. It was voted among other measures that the same honors should be given to the birthdays of Tiberius and of Drusilla as to that of Augustus. The actor folk also celebrated a festival, provided a spectacle, and set up and dedicated images of Gaius and Drusilla.—This was in accordance with a letter of Gaius. ”

“ They were howling and cheering for Pompeius and Lentulus, and cursing the absent proconsul. As Drusus passed along at the side of Antonius, he could not fail to hear the execrations and vile epithets flung from every side at him and his friend. He had always supposed the masses were on Cæsar's side, but now every man's hand seemed turned against the conqueror of the Gauls. Was there to be but a repetition of the same old tragedy of the Gracchi and of Marcus Drusus? A brave man standing out for the people, and the people deserting him in his hour of need? ”

“ East, west, north, south—all involved—so great has our Roman world become!"
"And are there not wrongs, abuses, Imperator, which cry for vengeance and for righting?" replied Drusus, vehemently. "Since the fall of Carthage, have not the fears of Scipio Æmilianus almost come true: Troy has fallen, Carthage has fallen; has not Rome almost fallen, fallen not by the might of her enemies, but by the decay of her morals, the degeneracy of her statesmen? What is the name of liberty, without the semblance! Is it liberty for a few mighty families to enrich themselves, while the Republic groans? ”

“ Gaius Valerius Catullus of Verona, one of the greatest names of Latin poetry, belonged, like most of this group, to a wealthy and distinguished family, and was introduced at an early age to the most fashionable circles of the capital. He was just so much younger than Lucretius that the Marian terror and the Sullan proscriptions can hardly have left any strong traces on his memory. When he died, Caesar was still fighting in Gaul, and the downfall of the Republic could only be dimly foreseen. In time, no less than in genius, he represents the fine flower of the Ciceronian age. ”

“ RISE OF CAESAR Rome at this time held another prominent leader in politics, namely, Gaius Julius Caesar. He belonged to a noble family, but his father had favored the democratic cause and his aunt had married Marius. After Sulla's death Caesar threw himself with energy into the game of politics at the capital city. In these early years the future statesman seems to have been a demagogue of the usual type, who sought through the favor of the people a rapid rise to power. ”

“ Re-enter Messala, with Brutus, young Cato, and others.
BRUTUS. Where, where, Messala, doth his body lie? MESSALA. Lo, yonder, and Titinius mourning it. BRUTUS. Titinius' face is upward. CATO. He is slain. BRUTUS. O Julius Caesar, thou art mighty yet! Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords In our own proper entrails. Low alarums. CATO. Brave Titinius! Look whe'er he have not crown'd dead Cassius! BRUTUS. Are yet two Romans living such as these? The last of all the Romans, fare thee well! It is impossible that ever Rome Should breed thy fellow. ”

“ As Marcus Cicero was attending Gaius Caesar to the Capitol, he happened to tell his friends a dream of the night before; that a boy of noble countenance was let down from heaven on a golden chain and, standing by the door of the temple, was given a whip by Jupiter. Just then suddenly catching sight of Augustus, who was still unknown to the greater number of those present and had been brought to the ceremony by his uncle Caesar, he declared that he was the very one whose form had appeared to him in his dream. ”

“ Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Caesar Germanicus was the second son of Drusus and Antonia, the brother of Germanicus, the father of Caligula. In early life he had been weak in mind and body, and had been despised or neglected. As emperor he was ruled by his wives and favorites, Narcissus and Pallas. He was poisoned by his last wife, Agrippina, who was anxious that her son Domitius Ahenobarbus by her former husband might succeed to the empire. Suetonius in his ‘Lives of the Caesars’ gives a very dark picture of the reign of Claudius. ”

“ The new monarch of Rome, the first ruler over the whole domain of Romano-Hellenic civilization, Gaius Julius Caesar, was in his fifty-sixth year (born 12 July 652?) when the battle at Thapsus, the last link in a long chain of momentous victories, placed the decision as to the future of the world in his hands. Few men have had their elasticity so thoroughly put to the proof as Caesar— the sole creative genius produced by Rome, and the last produced by the ancient world, which accordingly moved on in the path that he marked out for it until its sun went down. ”

“ Whenever grain was plentiful, he distributed it to them without stint or measure, and now and then gave each man a slave from among the captives.
27 Moreover, to retain his relationship and friendship with Pompey, Caesar offered him his sister's granddaughter Octavia in marriage, although she was already the wife of Gaius Marcellus, and asked for the hand of Pompey's daughter, who was promised to Faustus Sulla. ”

“ But though a limit was set to the honours paid him, his eulogy was twice delivered: before the temple of the Deified Julius by Tiberius, and from the old rostra by Drusus, son of Tiberius; and he was carried on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martius and there cremated. There was even an ex-praetor who took oath that he had seen the form of the Emperor, after he had been reduced to ashes, on its way to heaven. His remains were gathered up by the leading men of the equestrian order, bare-footed and in ungirt tunics, and placed in the Mausoleum. ”

“ The road gradually trended off to the right; that dark mass, that now lay to the left, was the tomb of the Scipios, [348] and there, in front of them, hardly visible in the darkness of night, rose the arch of Drusus, [349] through which the road led them. They were now outside the limits of the city itself—the fourteen regions, as they were called, of Augustus Caesar. But Rome, the illimitable metropolis, flung out her arms far beyond these prescribed boundaries. That undulating plain, which we now know as the Campagna, was then dotted over with villas and pleasure-gardens. ”

“ The extreme degree of profligacy at which the Romans were now arrived is in nothing more evident, than that this age gave birth to the most horrible conspiracy which occurs in the annals of humankind, viz. that of Catiline. This was not the project of a few desperate and abandoned individuals, but of a number of men of the most illustrious rank in the state; and it appears beyond doubt, that Julius Caesar was accessary to the design, which was no less than to extirpate the Senate, divide amongst themselves both the public and private treasures, and set Rome on fire. ”

“ In this period died, in the eighty-sixth year of her age, Livia Drusilla, mother of the emperor, and the relict of Augustus, whom she survived fifteen years. She was the daughter of L. Drusus Calidianus and married Tiberius Claudius Nero, by whom she had two sons, Tiberius and Drusus. ”

“ Piqued however because he was not at once given an audience with Sextus Pompeius, and was denied the use of the fasces, he crossed to Achaia and joined Mark Antony. With him he shortly returned to Rome, on the conclusion of a general peace, and gave up to Augustus at his request his wife Livia Drusilla, who was pregnant at the time and had already borne him a son. Not long afterwards he died, survived by both his sons, Tiberius Nero and Drusus Nero. ”

“ Augustus had accomplished his desire. Men were looking on Caesar as a success after all and not as a failure. The Di Manes of a murdered emperor had been profitably exchanged for the Divus Julius, and just as the gods had founded the old Rome of Romulus, so again it was a god who had laid the foundations of the empire over which his successor was ruling. ”

“ A few minutes later he passed no less a personage than the consular Lucius Domitius on his way to some political conference. He did not know what that dignitary muttered as he swept past in spotless toga, but the gloomy ferocity of his brow needed no interpreter. Drusus, however, never for a moment gave himself disquietude. He was fortified for the best and the worst, not by any dumb resignation, not by any cant of philosophy, but by an inward monitor which told him that some power in some way would lead him forth out of all dangers in a manner whereof man could neither ask nor think. ”

“ And now a splendid aristocracy claimed to rule a subject world, while the "Roman people" that had conquered that world were a degenerate mob, whose suffrages in the elections were purchasable—almost openly—by the highest bidder. The way was not clear before Drusus; he only saw, with his blind, Pagan vision, that no real liberty existed under present conditions; that Pompeius and his allies, the Senate party, were trying to perpetuate the aristocracy in power, and that Cæsar, the absent proconsul of the Gauls, stood, at least, for a sweeping reform. ”

“ Ælius Sejanus, the Præfect of the Prætorians, had long been the friend and chief adviser of the emperor. He was cruel, unscrupulous, and ambitious—the proper instrument of a tyrant. In A.D. 21 an insurrection broke out in Gaul, which was scarcely subdued when the Germans rose against the Romans. The Gauls, too, led by Sacrovir, a Druid, who exercised a superstitious influence over his countrymen, once more rebelled. Drusus, who had been made Consul with his father, was sent against them, and reduced them to subjection. ”

“ In the 596th year of Rome, Julius Caesar defeated Ariovistus, a German king, near Dampierre in the Franche-Comte, and pursued his routed troops with great slaughter thirty miles towards the Rhine, filling all that space with spoils and dead bodies. (Bell. Gall. i. 33 and 52.) He had before chastised the Tigurini, who, as already mentioned, had defeated and killed L. Cassius. Drusus: This was the son of Livia, and brother of the emperor Tiberius. He was in Germany B.C. 12, 11. His loss was principally from shipwreck on the coast of the Chauci. See Lynam's Roman Emperors, i. 37, 45, Nero ”

“ A permanent government by one strong man will be the only one practicable to save the world from anarchy. Have you realized that?"
"I only know, Imperator," said Drusus, gloomily, "that no future state can be worse than ours to-day, when the magistrates of the Republic are the most grievous despots."
Cæsar shook his head.
"You magnify your own wrongs and mine. If mere revenge prompts us, we are worse than Xerxes, or Sulla. The gods alone can tell us what is right."
"The gods!" cried Drusus, half sunken though he was in a weary lethargy, "do you believe there are any gods?" ”

“ When next year Gaius Marcellus, who had succeeded his cousin Marcus as consul, tried the same thing, Caesar by a heavy bribe secured the support of the other consul, Aemilius Paulus, and of Gaius Curio, the most reckless of the tribunes. But seeing that everything was being pushed most persistently, and that even the consuls elect were among the opposition, he sent a written appeal to the senate, not to take from him the privilege which the people had granted, or else to compel the others in command of armies to resign also ”

“ During all the civil wars which desolated the Roman empire through a long course of years in that age, Tarsus steadily adhered to the house of Caesar, first to the great Julius and afterwards to Augustus. So remarkable was its attachment and devotion to the cause of Julius, that when the assassin Cassius marched through Asia into Syria to secure the dominion of the eastern world, he laid siege to Tarsus, and having taken it, laid it waste with the most destructive vengeance for its adherence to the fortunes of his murdered lord ”